School SJ Club

[silverbullet]

The head of the school I work at approached me on Friday to look into setting up a Riding/Show Jumping Club in school as an extra curricular activity. He had been approached by some students asking for one.

So I have told him i'll get back to him with info/problems/costs etc.

I don't want to sound defeatist but I really do think that it will be a no-go due to the cost implications.

So this is my list of things I will include:

Anything i've missed out (I know theres some teachers on here as well, anything you could think of H & S wise would be good).

1. Need to gauge the interest of students - these would need to have their own horse or access to a horse on a regular basis.
2. Somewhere to train - the nearest equestrian centre with facilities for a SJ course is £25 per hour to hire. Would probably need 2 hours per training session.
3. An instructor - although i'm happy to supervise I can't teach as i'm not qualified. There are many freelance instructors in the area with varying prices but on average £15-25 per person per hour.
4. Parental Involvement - parents would need to be prepared to transport their children to training and competitions. Parents will also need to stay at training and competitions and be responsible for their children.
5. Letter to go out to parents explaining costs, what is expected of the parents in regards to transport and supervision etc. What we are aiming for.
6. NSEA membership - needed to compete at inter schools SJ.
7. Entry fees for competitons.

Thats all i've got so far...

How often do you think training sessions would be needed, any other ideas for activities for fundraising, horse related activities where you don't need your own horse.

 

[TinselTurkey]

You could do training sessions once or twice a month, for the horse related activities for non horse owners you could maybe go to horsey events (badminton, HOYS etc..), lectures, course building, watching horsey films

 

[DuckToller]

I started up a school team at my daughter's school, and the only time I organised a school training session was when we qualified for the championships and as it was Jumping and Style I thought we needed some extra input from an event rider.

The rest of the time people just had lessons with their normal trainers, and I asked them all to fill in a form where they had to list their current jumping height, backed up with results from recent shows.

We didn't have many riders so in our case it was more a question of trying to find enough to make up a team. But I knew most of those that rode well from the local pony clubs, and one or two that said they could jump higher than I suspected they could, I rang up the DC and had a quiet word!

At my friend's school they have a team, but again they never hold training sessions, everyone just has their usual trainer/instructor and then they meet up at a competition.

The school supported us, but refused to fund entry fees or diesel because it was such an expensive sport. We didn't mind, as we would have been paying entry fees for going to a show anyway, but they did offer to cough up for school saddle cloths - after we had all bought them

If you had a considerable number of people wanting to be in the team, you might need to hold a training day to sort out who could actually ride at the upper heights to be safe, but otherwise why go to the huge effort of organising something that would be very expensive, and I suspect half the people would not turn up to? (that's what happened to another friend's school team, loads of interest, then they all backed off!).

Good luck with it and pm me if you want any other info - btw, our team won the NSEA championships a few years ago, so I did ok as team manager!

 

[Snowysadude]

They did this when i was at school for a few months but then got shut down because they hadnt carried out the proper risk assesment etc so just dont forget to do one if its a club organised by the school! Other than that good luck

 

[Dubsie]

One of the mums at daughter's (primary) school owns a RS, and she organised an after school club where they did some riding and some horse care and stable management each week for 5 weeks at a discount, it was very popular and totally oversubscribed, but did gain the RS some longer term pupils as many booked lessons and pony days over the half term. I think there was a HUGE amount of organisation involved (lots of fact sheets on eg feeding, points of horses, names of all the parts of tack and how to put it on, clean it etc), as most were non-riders/total beginners to start with but I know the kids loved it and were so chuffed with their rosettes at the end of the course.

I would think you might be better off approaching a RS and asking if they could offer a discount fee and tuition for a regular after school group - know that several of the local (private) schools have this organised with some of the RS locally, in fact one of the schools has such a popular after school group that the RS closed their more ad hoc lesson on that day to devote their time entirely to the school. However that was with the pupils using the RS ponies. If the RS were to take it on it would take the burden of organising the sessions and the training (CRB checks risk assesments etc will all have been done, insurance etc sorted), plus it could be a good regular income for the RS, as presumably they'd have a full class all the time.